


burn and burn out

by drowninglovers



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/F, Getting Together, Intricate Rituals, Post-War of the Ring, Recovery, Sharing a Bed, haircut as a metaphor for loss of innocence, only the main 4 hobbits are girls everyone else is still a dude, sauron defeated by the power of wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26006716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drowninglovers/pseuds/drowninglovers
Summary: Frodo is dead, and then she isn't.
Relationships: Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	burn and burn out

**Author's Note:**

> -unless otherwise stated, everything i write belongs to an 'eowyn is theoden's successor' 'verse because i think it's cool and sexy  
> -title from constance garnett's translation of _the brothers karamazov_ by fyodor dostoevsky. the quote in full reads "You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again. And I will  
> wait for you."

Frodo is dead, and then she isn’t. The last thing she is aware of is the mountain’s heat around her, and Sam’s slow, hiccuping breaths at her neck. She could die like this. That would be okay. Far better than a drawn-out end at the hands of Sauron’s armies. Better than a nasty tumble or dark water closing over her vision. If she has to die, let it be once she’s succeeded in her quest, let her not be alone when it happens. Let her not leave Sam alone. Frodo Baggins clings to consciousness on the side of an erupting volcano, and then she awakes in a fine bed. How long has it been since she last lay upon a warm mattress and feather pillow? When she and Sam were on the last days of her journey, she could recall nothing of her life before Rivendell. When Sam spoke of the Shire, it would sometimes take her a moment to remember that it was a place where they once lived rather than a marvellous fantasy they’d made up to stoke the last embers of hope. She awoke alone on a rock and felt as though she’d been born alone on a rock with that weight around her neck.

There is no weight now. No cool metal against her skin, but her body remembers how heavy it was. Her neck blistered where the chain hung. She can feel the itch of her nightshirt against the wounds and a thick, grey salve over the rash. The smell is like nothing she can remember from the Shire. Funny. Isn’t death supposed to heal all wounds? Her left hand remains one finger short.

Gandalf is here, but Gandalf died. Gandalf fell down, down, down the long chasm in Moria. Gandalf died to save them. Boromir too. But Gandalf is here, and Boromir is not, and Frodo is not dead but unconvinced she's alive.

The others file in and, face by face, she comes to believe that this is real. Merry and Pippin charge forward, heedless and brave as they ever were. They are a little coloured by war. Merry is careful as she leaps onto Frodo’s bed, aware of her body in a way she never was before. Pippin wears her hair up, braided around her head, and her eyes are haunted. Merry is telling her something about the oliphaunts and Frodo doesn’t have the heart to tell her that she and Sam saw them too. Gimli has new beads in his beard, sea-green leaves encased in glass, but Frodo is looking past him, past Legolas and Aragorn, to Sam standing in the doorway. She smiles, and Sam smiles back. Neither of them says anything, neither gives any acknowledgment beyond these looks. What more needs to be said?

Although she does not want to admit it, and although she is trying to fight the impulse, she cannot make herself pay attention to the conversation. Her friends’ voices begin to fade, all sound turning to a faint ringing in her ears. She slumps against the pillow; it is far too soft to be comfortable to a body which adapted to peril. How long was she asleep? How long were they on that mountain before the eagles picked them up? Did Sam wake up long before she did? She must have. She’s probably been awake for ages, waiting for Frodo to catch up.

When Frodo’s eyes close, she can see it perfectly. Her prone body still as death in another unfamiliar place, Sam keeping vigil at her bedside, only sleeping when her body demanded it, curling over Frodo’s bandaged hand cupped like a relic in her own. There must have been a period where they wondered if she’d wake at all, whether the Ring, even once destroyed, was too great a burden for someone so small.

Frodo was dead. She grew familiar with death—greeted it as an old friend she’d been playing chase with, let it take her hands and kiss her brow—and now she must rejoin the world of the living. She did things, said things to Sam she’d only ever considered putting a voice to because they were going to die. Of all the things she would take to the grave—the contents of such a list have at least tripled in length in the past year—she could not let this be one of them.

“I think,” Gandalf begins, and cannot keep the fondness from his voice, “we should give Frodo and Sam some time to themselves.” The others do as they are told, coming up to clasp her hand or her shoulders, tell her she looks well before letting her be.

“They had _most of a journey_ to themselves,” Pippin complains and seems reluctant to leave, but untangles herself from Frodo all the same.

“You empty-headed fool,” Merry mutters and steers her cousin from the room by the back of her collar.

“We’ll be back before supper!” Pippin hollers before they’re completely out of earshot.

Sam does not move from the doorway. There’s a cut beginning to heal on her cheek and Frodo cannot remember how it got there; she wonders if she was the one to make it. Sam opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again. When Frodo woke up in Rivendell there were only seconds between her eyes opening and Sam rushing to her side, grasping her hand the same way she would when Frodo pulled her up from the river.

“We’re not dead,” she breathes, and her voice sounds like kindling before the first spark of fire. She knows she should say ‘alive’ rather than ‘not dead’ and she knows she should say it with joy but can conjure neither of those things at the present.

“Yes, it appears we're not,” and then Sam does come to her side. She does not run; her legs are a bit unsteady. With deliberate strides, she crosses the room to Frodo’s side and, without being asked, picks up the pitcher on the table. Sam’s warm hand cups the back of Frodo’s head to help her drink and that is when it becomes apparent that something is wrong. No, not _wrong_. Different. Sam’s calloused fingers rest against her neck, and Frodo's struck with a horrible sense of unease.

“Sam,” she begins, hoping her voice does not waver, “is there a glass handy?”

Sam’s voice _does_ waver when she says, “I suppose so,” and when her hand slips from Frodo’s hair, it trembles. She rummages through a set of drawers for a minute, during which time it is plain as day that she hopes not to find a glass at all. This does nothing for Frodo’s nerves.

She knows her hair’s gone. She could feel it when she raised her head from the pillow, when Sam’s fingers carded through it but caught only air. This is no great tragedy. Her left hand is missing a finger too, but she’ll shed no tears for that. Her skin is burnt from the mountain and rubbed raw from the months of travelling, but she does not regret what’s become of her complexion.

Sam loved her hair. And now it’s all gone.

A glass finds its way into her hands, silvery, austere, when it catches the light it nearly blinds her. A perfect relic for such an ancient city. Maybe if she does not look, her suspicions will not be true. Maybe she can learn to live around herself, outside of herself, until she can live with not being dead. It wasn’t something she wished for (not that there weren’t moments where she thought it’d be easier. Where the only possible solution to alleviate her friends’ suffering was to remove herself from the situation), but she’d made peace with it a dozen times at least.

In Bree, the first time the Ring slid onto her finger and she knew in an instant that it was alive and wanted to be found, that until she managed to destroy it or die trying, she’d be hunted. At Weathertop when the Morgul blade slid through her skin like a frisky hand under a shirt. Against Arwen on horseback, when she got so close to death she could taste it on her tongue. When she would have fallen to the goblins in Moria had it not been for Bilbo’s old shirt. Later when the rock nearly gave way under her feet, nearly left Gondor without a King, nearly left the Ring without a Ring-bearer. When Sam almost drowned and she knew she’d never be able to live with herself if something happened to her. When Faramir’s men picked them up after dispatching a company of Haradrim. When Sméagol first came crawling out of the shadows. Each time she saw an orc she assumed this was how it was to end. Each time she heard the song of unsheathed steel, she took a moment to make sure that if she was to die, it would not be with a heavy heart. By the time Mount Doom was close enough to stay in her vision, she awoke more and more surprised to find herself still breathing.

It’s difficult to recall the last time she gazed upon her own reflection. It was never something she was prone to in excess, and opportunities for such an act have been far and few in the last year. The farther they went from the Shire, the more excuses she made up to avoid even catching a glimpse of her reflection in a pond. Truth be told, she cannot remember entirely how she is supposed to look.

The glass is heavy in her hand; a face that is her own and not her own stares back, unflinching. Blisters and scrapes mar her skin. She’s surprised the burns aren’t worse. Without seeing the rest of her body, she can see the new hollowness to her face, a complete lack of excess skin around all her most angular points. Her neck is an ugly red, mottled and half-dead, to which she tugs at her collar to try and hide it even from Sam. Under her eyes are bags that she’s sure won’t go away even if she sleeps more deeply than any Hobbit ever has for every night for the rest of her life. And her hair...Well her hair’s almost all gone, isn’t it?

“Oh.”

* * *

True to their word, Merry and Pippin return right before supper. Rather they return bearing supper. Sweet rolls and milky tea, hearty cups of stew not rich enough to make her weak stomach revolt. Sleep takes her shortly after, and she does not wake until the sun has crept far below the horizon.

As expected, Sam has not left her side even though the initial threat of danger has passed. Her chair's drawn close enough to the bed that she can rest her feet on the frame, the neat pile where they left their dinner things long since cleaned. Sam is not a tranquil sleeper. Her position cannot be comfortable if the slight creak her back gives is any indication. The arm of the chair where both elbow and head are balanced precariously is in danger of leaving an indent in her skin come morning. Frodo wouldn’t mind spending the rest of her life watching Sam by moonlight but would prefer to see her in comfort. With all the time they’ve spent with rocks in their backs, enemies at their heels because of her, the least she can do is ensure Sam's spine is still intact when she wakes.

“Sam,” she whispers, reaching a hand over to her knee. “Sam.” No answer. A moment passes wherein she worries that this is not normal rest but some cursed death-sleep that has overtaken her Sam. This worry is unfounded, mercifully. Sam makes a quiet snuffling noise in her sleep when Frodo sees her chance and applies a little more pressure shaking her knee. “Sam, wake up!”

Sam jolts awake and almost pitches herself from her seat. “Was resting my eyes is all.”

“If you want to stay, this bed’s big enough for two and I daresay more comfortable than the chair,” with this, she throws back the covers and shifts her weight over in hopes that the action reads as an invitation rather than a plea. She does not say _I want you to stay with me like this_ , nor does she say _I’ve been so cold without you_ , but she’s sure her thoughts are loud enough that Sam could hear them all the same.

Time balances on the head of a pin as Sam makes her decision. She looks at the bed, then at Frodo, then her own body, and the whole process over again. Her “okay” is so quiet it’s almost missed, but Frodo hears it and feels something hopelike blossom in her chest. Sam makes no major changes to her appearance, aside from removing her belt and adjusting her clothing, for she's dressed for no occasion but a trip down the hall, yet Frodo averts her eyes all the same. This is different from out in the wild. If they wanted to, they could say that each time they shared a bedroll was only for practicality’s sake. It was cold, and it was dangerous, and nobody back in the Shire would begrudge them for hoarding every shred of comfort they could find with bloody nails. If they wanted to forget that, they could. A bedroll is not a bed when there is no shortage of them. Even in Bree, when her companions rested, lined up like children, she was too worried to sleep. She and Sam haven’t done this since they were children and Sam grew too sleepy to walk down the hill after one too many of Bilbo’s stories, and things were different then.

Well, a lot of things were different then.

When she is sure Sam is asleep by the way her body has stilled and her breathing quieted to a gentle wheeze, Frodo allows herself to cry. She cries for the ruined section of the beautiful city they’re staying in and the dead which littered the fields outside. She cries for Faramir, who lost his family and nearly his life trying to earn the love of a father who'd never give it. She cries for Gandalf, for she did not cry when he fell, and she cries for the friendship he broke with Saruman. Tears for the commonfolk whose names she will never hear in songs, who fought not for glory but to protect that which they love, tears for the Elves who gave up immortality to honour their alliance with Men, tears for the Dwarves of Moria who tunnelled too deep. When she thinks there is nothing more to cry about, she finds that grief is a flood and a well; as torrential as the initial outpouring is, there is always more for her to go back down to. She cries so hard for Bilbo, for the weight he lived with for decades, that she wonders if she’ll ever run out of tears. She even cries for Sméagol, poor, wretched creature that he was. More than anything, she cries for herself when she thinks about who she was before this journey started, for she wishes she could go back and warn that girl of what is to come. To conjure her pre-quest self takes more effort than she’d care to admit as she pushes back time, thinks of bright eyes and her hair spilling from its bun as she danced at Bilbo’s party.

Her hair—

The sobs dissolve into hiccups dissolve into stillness again. She prays this outburst did not startle Sam. Shifting her body to peer behind her bears too much risk of waking her bedfellow, so she will lie very still and pretend to sleep.

Sam always loved her hair. Always marvelled at its length and colour. Although it was never part of her duties, she enjoyed helping Frodo pin it back when asked. They carried this tradition with them to the road. The others might have thought it silly or frivolous, a rustic holdover from the Shire, but that never mattered to them. Sam thought her hair was beautiful. Even when they couldn’t afford to stop, when Sméagol would hiss and whine at them to stop being silly and keep up, Sam would insist on repinning her hair when it was loose or tangled. It was a little bit of home; they’d be wise to hold onto it while they could.

And then Sméagol made a mess of everything, sent Sam away for a crime she did not commit. No, Sméagol did not do that. He may have been the one to encourage it, but she was the one who forced Sam to leave. Sam went away and one of her hairpins got stuck and she could not free it except by yanking. She swears she heard it fall all the way to the bottom of the steps and wonders if Sam stumbled upon it. Then when she was taken by the orcs in Shelob’s lair, they freed her from the web but kept her intact only as much as necessary. The webbing was too sticky to detangle and so, she must have lost a foot of hair by grimy orcish hands. She lost more from the fires of Mount Doom, the heat of the rocks and the lava that beckoned her to join the Ring, to hold it in her hands one last time. Singed pieces were falling over her shoulders as Sam herded, pushed her from the cavernous mouth of the mountain, towards one final almost-safe place. Even now, she swears she can still smell something burning.

Frodo counts to eleventy-one and back. The room is a perfect cocoon of silence. She wonders: if she plays at sleep long enough, will she trick her body into falling back into it? Her limbs will go loose and her mind blank with nary a thought of Rings nor bone nor the body next to her which has gone too quiet.

“I know you’re pretending to sleep,” Sam whispers. “I was doing the same before while you were, well....”

“While I was crying.”

“Yes.”

“That’s very courteous of you, but you might have asked me to quiet down so you could sleep.”

“No, I don’t think I would,”

There it is again, that awful moment of balance. Frodo feels herself on the edge of a knife, a knife to her throat. She hears the rustle of Sam turning onto her side so they may look at each other, one work-roughed hand bunching up the soft pillow under her head. Frodo turns too and does not gasp when she shifts, and Sam is not as far as she’d assumed. Perhaps this bed is not less roomy than she’d thought when she pulled the covers back to get Sam beside her. Or, perhaps, it is the exact right size. They used to lie this way when they were children, they lied this way on the road but with not so little space between them. Frodo hates herself for seeing a future when she squints, for imaging her and Sam together like this in a dozen rooms, a dozen places, a dozen times over the rest of their lives.

“Would it help if you talked about it?”

It would, yes. Her chances for talking about what happened, with the only person who’d understand, will be far and few before she will know it. They'll be lauded as heroes then return to the Shire and try to fit back into their old lives knowing full well such a thing will be impossible. Sam will get married and be happy and Frodo will be the town eccentric the way Bilbo was before her. Bilbo left her a lot to inherit besides Bag End, besides the Ring.

“You’d think me silly if you knew why I wept.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You would.”

“No. I’d think you silly, miss, for assuming I’d hold tears against you. If anyone’s earned the right to cry, it’s you.”

“It’s such a horrible vanity,” she whispers, and cannot stop a hand from jumping to her scalp.

“You miss your hair.”

“Yes.”

Sam does not mince words. She does not say _it’ll grow back, dearie_ , the way she imagines a mother would to a child who got into the scissors and was horrified by their results. She lays a hand on Frodo’s shoulder, on the point where her Man-sized nightshirt has slipped away from her skin, and Frodo swears she burns still. “You’re allowed to miss it. You weren’t the one to cut it. Not that this matters at all, but I do not believe it is as bad as you think. You could be bald as an egg and still wouldn’t be ugly, not to me.”

This brings the tears back, and this time she does not try to hide them. Sam closes the distance between them, twisting her fingers into her shorn hair. Frodo folds her body into Sam’s, and, after a while, she stops shaking. The next time she opens her eyes, the first light of dawn is creeping under the curtains, and Sam’s eyelashes flutter against her cheeks but do not lift.

* * *

Two weeks is as long as Aragorn can delay his coronation before the men who will be his advisors insist on going ahead. He wants to give time for the city to begin rebuilding, to tally the dead and give them proper funerary rites, for his friends to recover so they can be there with him. Before the coronation, Frodo remembers her body. She leans on Sam or Gandalf as they walk through the corridors of the White City. She gets better at listening without being overwhelmed by the ringing in her ears, meets Faramir's hand in hers when he stops by to pay his respects, pulled into the room by Pippin’s incessant joy. She dips her head in reverence when Merry brings to her the woman who will be Queen of Rohan and her brother, a Marshal of the Riddermark, remembering to give her condolences for their uncle, the King, despite never knowing him. She asks the healers who change her bandages and monitor her wounds about their lives and families, what they will do now that the War is over. She lets herself be measured for new clothing and only flinches a little when unfamiliar hands try to touch her without touching her at all. Bit by bit, she returns to herself. The evening before Aragorn will wear a crown that has not graced the brow of a King for generations, she can walk the perimeter of the Houses of Healing without Sam’s assistance (though neither of them makes any move to disentangle their arms).

The dress laid in front of her is a fine ruby red, so dark it’s almost the purple of a bruise. Care has been taken to mimic the styles she would have worn back home. It is Shire-like, but not of the Shire. The cut is roughly the same as one of her frocks back home, the colour similar enough to what she would wear, but the hem falls too low on her calves, and the sleeves are much narrower than is her preference. Nevermind that. She’s to witness one of her dearest companions being crowned King of Gondor, the least she can do is wear this dress that fits her but does not _fit_ her.

Managing the underskirt is easy, though it’s been long enough since she’s worn anything but pants that the swoosh of skirts around her legs is a foreign sensation. She thinks for a moment, that Sam is very smart to never wear skirts, even to parties, there’s an awful lot of managing to do when wearing one. Shrugging into the kirtle, she realises there may be a slight problem with the laces. At least whoever made this dress had the decency to put the laces on the front, but she’s always had help with this step. And she is much too embarrassed to venture out into the hall to find someone to assist, as though she’s a girl in her first grown-up party dress.

Nonetheless, she’ll manage herself.

There arises a problem in the form of her still-bandaged hand, clumsy as it relearns motion. The laces are so thin and threading them is so difficult when she must look down her body that she’s sure she’s going to be late. Frustration bubbles up under her skin, but she does not let it overflow lest she damages the dress in any way. She must be the laziest, most spoiled Hobbit in history if she cannot even figure out a set of laces.

A knock comes on the door, and she blurts out a harried “a minute if you’d please!” while furiously trying to make her hands work the way they used to.

“It’s me,” says the voice, her Sam’s voice, “might I come in, miss?”

“Yes!” Better to have Sam help her than someone she doesn’t even know.

Sam pushes the door open with the same care as when she holds a sapling in her hands. Her hair is shiny, and her eyes are kind and she wears a fine velvet waistcoat over a well-pressed shirt. “Gandalf sent me to fetch you,” she explains, then looks at where Frodo’s hands are tangled in her own dress. “Can I help at all?” There’s so much warmth in her voice that Frodo feels something sharp open her from neck to navel, exposing each chamber of her heart for all the world to see.

“Would you?” she asks, focusing on untangling the laces as best she can.

Sam steps forward and pauses for but a moment before replacing Frodo’s hands with her own. She works calmly, methodically threading laces through eyelets as though it’s the only thing she ever wants to do for the rest of her life. There is so much domesticity, and Frodo aches with want for this intimacy to remain a fixture in her life that her heart jumps to the back of her throat. She’d cough it up into Sam’s hands if she knew she’d never get it back.

“Can I tell you something?”

“Of course, miss.”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You needn’t apologise. We ought to be equals, don't you think?”

“Alright then.”

What she means to say is _thank you for sticking with me through all this,_ or _I’m sorry for hurting you,_ or even _I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d let you drown_. But she does not say any of these, least of all the final sentiment to which she knows Sam would say something to the point of knowing Frodo would never let her drown, which would make it all worse. But, if she’s being honest, she could say any of those things as easy as she could say—

“I love you,” Frodo blurts out, her cheeks aflame, her tongue clumsy in her mouth. “Quite terribly, as it is. The way it is in poems.”

Sam’s hands are still occupied with the laces of her dress, one warm palm heavy against her hip where the bone juts out. Then, a pause. Only enough time to breathe, and then there is a small, almost imperceptible tug from Sam’s right hand, urging her closer by a few precious inches. The laces remain unfinished, Sam’s other hand is curling around her back now.

“Is that all?” Sam whispers, almost teasing, “I thought you were going to tell me something new.”

‘Something new!” Frodo gasps and cannot keep the laughter from colouring her face, “the cheek on you, Samwise Gamgee! I confess my love and she acts as though I’ve told her the sky is blue!”

“Well, sometimes it’s grey. And sometimes it’s black, at night, or when there’s a storm. Pink, orange, red, purple…” the last words trail off, jokes mattering little in the face of everything else. Sam’s hands are around her back like someone is going to steal her away and the tips of her fingers are grazing Sam’s shoulders, her palms pressed against Sam’s collarbone. Their foreheads begin to tilt toward each other in simple magnetism. Frodo is looking at Sam’s mouth and Sam is looking at hers and then—

There is a great clatter from outside the hallway, the call of familiar voices, and Frodo and Sam cannot pull themselves apart fast enough before Pippin comes barreling through the doorway—why hadn’t they thought to close the door in the first place? Half of Minas Tirith could have peered in at their leisure—and pauses at what she sees. Merry is only seconds behind, and crashes into Pippin, almost sending them both to the ground. She cackles with pure delight, before throwing a hand over Pippin’s eyes.

“What’s this?” Pippin grins once she’s managed to throw Merry’s hand from her gaze.

“Well, Pip, when two Hobbits love each other very much—”

“I know how _that_ works thank you very much.”

What follows is a debate not so much on the nature of Frodo and Sam’s relationship, because that’s clear as day and has been so since before they even left the Shire, if not to them, but on the current trajectory of it. Pippin is Shocked and Appalled that it took an entire year and a half for them to even acknowledge their feelings. Merry’s more exasperated than anything else, she thought it only would have taken a few months. Sam appears to be attempting to sink through the floor, while Frodo’s shooing them from the room so she can get an exact answer about the trajectory of her relationship with Sam. She promises they won’t be one second late for Aragorn’s coronation at the threat of Gandalf’s disapproval.

Merry gives one final scandalised? bemused? look at the loose front of Frodo’s dress before heading off. Her voice is still audible when she says “first Legolas and Gimli, now those two. You’d think this was a matchmaking service.”

“Perhaps Gandalf should start one,” Pippin suggests before their footfalls carry away any further conversation.

Her face must be positively scarlet when she turns back to Sam who looks both on the verge of hysterics, and ready to throw their fellow Hobbits from the highest spire she can find. Sam’s hands are on her once more as she tightens and ties the laces of Frodo’s dress like she’s been practicing for years.

“We should find everyone else.” She says evenly, extending an arm.

“At least before Merry and Pippin do,” Frodo agrees, resting her fingers on the crisp linen sleeve. She’s amazed that such finery can still exist, by every right, no beautiful thing should have been allowed to remain in the face of such malice, and yet, it did. Before they turn to leave, Frodo cups a hand under Sam’s chin and presses a kiss to her cheek.

Sam turns a previously unknown shade of pink and allows herself to be pulled out of the room and down the hall. She is laughing, and the bells of Minas Tirith are ringing, and they are improbably, wonderfully alive.

**Author's Note:**

> -i'm [@nedlittle](https://nedlittle.tumblr.com) on tumblr and [@kitnotmarlowe](https://twitter.com/kitnotmarlowe) on twitter if you want to come bug me elsewhere  
> 


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